Attack of the 15-Foot Conductor

There's nothing like a week off to send you back to work refreshed and full of opinions. I'm still trying to figure out what I thought about the all-Tchaikovsky concert, where a large screen hung above the last Charlotte Symphony Orchestra to show what musicians were doing.

I enjoyed seeing soloists highlighted, especially those at the back of the orchestra, whom you almost never see. I smiled when wind players jammed plugs in their ears during a brass blast or timpani roll, and the camera taught me to think about the music differently: I'd never have picked up on a piccolo solo in the Fourth Symphony, if my eye hadn't been guided to the player.

At the same time, photography encourages laziness; instead of letting our eyes rove over the stage, we get into the rhythm of letting the director tell us where to look, as we do in a movie. Nor did I need to see 15-foot maestro Christopher Warren-Green mopping his brow between movements, like he'd ridden Secretariat to a Belmont Stakes win. (The audience laughed politely, but conducting Tchaikovsky should make you sweat.) I saw one player scratching vigorously, then looking up warily to see if the lens had caught him in a private moment.

So the camera is both illuminating and invasive, helpful and unhelpful. But do we need it at all? I was happy to have a big screen next to the stage when Paul McCartney played Time-Warner; I was sitting  across the arena, and Macca was the size of a thimble. But even this myopic old man can see musicians pretty well from anywhere in Belk Theater, and we go to hear classical music in any case.

I realize the CSO hopes to capture a younger, video-obsessed audience, and this may help. I support any experiment that brings in new ears, so I'll just close my eyes if I'm distracted. If you see me doing that, don't assume I'm asleep.